35 and Mortal: A Breast Cancer Diary

Published: June 29, 1997

(Page 7 of 7)

''It's good to be able to come here and talk. My friends want to tell me I'll be fine. They don't get it. I don't want to die, but I have to consider it. It's possible. That's what feels so unfair dealing with this at our age. I said to my friend, 'I need to know if I have a child that you'll take care of it if I go.' She said, 'That goes without saying.' But it doesn't for me. I want to live. I'm planning my future. But it does not go without saying.''

Natalie, who had a mastectomy at 36, is struggling, too. She has one child and would like to have more, but has decided that the risk to her health is too great. Last week a pregnant friend tried to convince her to change her mind. ''She kept saying, 'Everything's a risk,' '' Natalie said. '' 'You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.' ''

We groaned. ''I hate when people say that,'' I said.

''Yeah,'' Natalie agreed. ''You could get hit by a bus, but they're all up on the curb and I'm already standing in the road.

''I'm not saying it's not a tragedy to get cancer at 60,'' she continued, ''but this is different. I don't think about it in terms of me. I think in terms of my son, the markers of his life: if I can get him through high school, into a good college. I don't want to die when he's 5. To me, 60 sounds pretty good.''

I felt sadder and sadder. When Jeanne said her pet dog, who was 10 years old and blind, had wandered out of her yard and been hit by a car, I burst into tears.

''People are always asking me how I am in that significant way,'' she said, ''You know, 'How are you?' When I say I'm feeling terrible because my dog died, they roll their eyes and say, 'Is that all?' But you know, it's a loss. I had that dog before I had my kids.''

April 15

Steven and I finally had that normal night out I'd hoped for two months ago. We went back to the same club where I'd been so miserable before, this time to hear an old friend, George Kahumoku Jr., play Hawaiian slack-key guitar. Last time we saw him was on Big Island, a few days before we were married.

Steven put his arm around me. ''We've had a good five years since then,'' he said as I leaned against his shoulder. I can't say I didn't think about cancer during George's set -- it's still in my mind every second -- but for the first time since January, it faded into the background.

April 16

How do you tell a child that you have cancer? Most of the women in my support group are mothers of young children; usually they found their tumors shortly after giving birth. Jeanne's was diagnosed when her son was 10 months old and her daughter was 5. ''I ended up saying, 'Mommy's sick under her arm,' '' she said, '' 'and she takes very special medicine.' My daughter thinks it's all better now. I don't know what I'll tell her if there's a recurrence.''

Natalie lends out a picture book, ''Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer.'' She says her son wants to be a doctor and a builder when he grows up. ''He has this elaborate plan to build special beds in the hospital so that mommies with one breast can hold their babies close without having to pick them up,'' she told me. ''Why does a 4-year-old have to deal with this?''

Susan talks not from the perspective of a mother but from that of a daughter. ''My mom didn't want us to grow up worrying about cancer,'' she said. ''She taught us how to handle the fear. I feel I can pass that on. And I have the same hope she did: that either my kids won't get this or there will be better screening and treatment by the time they get to the age when it might happen.''

May 21 I went out hiking and came back covered with poison oak. I couldn't be happier: it's such a normal affliction. I'm working my way back down the crisis ladder -- first cancer, then poison oak, maybe next I'll get a really bad hangnail.

Someone in my support group said she's been ''visiting her terror'' a lot lately, as if it were a geographical place. A month after completing radiation, I find myself visiting my terror, too, at unexpected moments: during a busy workday, for instance, or over dinner with friends. My stomach suddenly clenches and I think, ''I'm a 35-year-old who just had cancer.'' It seems simultaneously unreal and the most real thing there is.

Keeping up with the news on breast cancer is tough; things change so quickly. Last week, a study found that the BRCA1 mutant gene, the one that makes breast and possibly ovarian cancer nearly inevitable, is neither as common nor as definitive as was thought. I was so relieved. When I think of the frequent flier miles I racked up visiting my terror -- and its twin city, confusion -- over that one! Then, yesterday, it turned out the women who do have to worry about it are those with both early-onset breast cancer and ovarian cancer in their families. I was right back on that plane. But that's part of this difficult journey, from screening to treatment and beyond: making life-and-death decisions based on information that is ever shifting and contradictory. Then not looking back.

Slowly, though, this disease is becoming a part of my life, rather than its center. I don't believe that I will die of breast cancer, at least not any time soon. I don't know whether we'll have a child, although I hope we do. I don't know anything for sure anymore, and I guess I'm learning to live with that. It's as if I fell off a cliff on Jan. 17. Maybe I still haven't landed.

Photo: The author's mammograms on a viewer at the Breast Health Center in San Francisco. (Photographs BY MICHAEL R. LEWIS)(pg. 31)